Guardian
by minatochan2
Summary: The war takes a turn for the worst when Naruto is forced to protect a group of rebels hail bent on destroying Konoha. Suspicious and strict, everything is more convenient when the leader happens to be an alternate version your father. What could have been had Minato not become the Fourth Hokage but someone very different... A.U-travel.
1. Through the Fog

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto ;ONO;

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_Giving your life for someone you love is better than watching that person give their life for the same love._

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**Chapter One:** Through the Fog

_ "If the weakest link falls, who is to say that the rest are not better off?"_

_ What makes someone weak enough that their death is beneficial?_

_ What makes someone strong enough to say that?_

_ Who can speak for the dead?_

_ Who is to say anything at all?_

_ How could someone _think_ that?_

_ How could anyone believe that?_

_ How could _he _have believed?_

_ Believed any of it?_

_ Why?_

_Oh, God, _why?

It was all a lie. He hoped it was. He'd realize he'd never existed, and it would be as if nothing had ever happened. Absolutely nothing. He would be in the middle of nowhere; he'd have no thoughts, no pain.

It was even darker now. Nighttime. The clatter of sandals swiftly faded down the corridor outside. The third watch was over.

Naruto hardly gave the motions of the outside world any thought; it had become natural to ignore them. He hazily hovered further back into the cell, not daring to venture too quickly. It was probably just another genjutsu.

Genjutsu.

Who ever created such a thing?

Genjustu.

Why had he ever wanted Ero-Sennin to teach him that?

Taijustu. Ninjutsu. Neither of them messed with who you were, bent what you knew so out of shape that you wondered if you'd ever known it at all.

Didn't people know that sanity was all anyone could cling to? Didn't they know?

Naruto managed to find a wall. He faintly embraced the coolness of the tile besides the fact that he was already chilled to the bone.

It was too dark to see, too quiet to hear. Someone had snapped their fingers, and the entire world shut off. No sound. No light. Nothing. Didn't they know people liked to hear? Didn't they know people liked to see?

Naruto certainly did. His staggered breathing morphed into the whispers of long forgotten friends.

_ "Naruto, you baka!" Sakura would say._

_ "What a loser."_

Maybe they'd never existed either. The thought seemed reassuring. Neither of them had faced any pain…

Naruto shook his head. He was alive. They must have been too. Or maybe not. Maybe they'd died back then, back in the war. He hadn't been there. The realization made the world seem even darker.

He shuffled further along. Even if it was a genjutsu, he figured he might as well find out where he was. He'd been in a similar setting before. His fingers sensed another corner, and he followed the path. The room wasn't too spacious. Oh, well. It's not like he'd have been able to see it if he wanted to anyway.

He wished that his sense of smell had been stolen instead. The cell was haunted with the stench of decay and corpses that danced in the air around him, but he forced his head down and continued his exploration. He silently prayed that he wouldn't find anything unsightly. He laughed awkwardly. Perhaps it hadn't been a bad thing that it was too dark to see.

As he walked, a disturbing thought prodded his mind. When had reality stopped? Even his dreams seemed more real than his waking hours; living was the real nightmare. He sprinted through his memories, desperately searching for the place where the seams of his psyche had come undone, sheer panic ripping through his system. An image immediately burned past his blind eyes. Naruto shut himself off from the swirling heat of emotions as soon as he felt the first lick of the flame, nearly falling over as the torrent subsided.

_ He had turned his back._

Naruto forced himself to swallow down the feelings and carry on.

He wanted to curl up and die. God, why wouldn't these people just let him die? It seemed so unfair. If a man wanted to stop living, didn't he have that privilege? It was his life, right?

Naruto felt so lost inside. He was his greatest ally, and he didn't understand himself, trust himself. Where was Kurama?

The fox gave no answer from his subconscious. He was completely and totally alone.

Naruto took a moment to listen to the silence. He could hear his heart beating in his ears and the quickening of his breath, the noise deafening in the sadistic stillness.

Alone.

Not that. Anything but that.

The blonde took a deep, calming breath and dedicated himself to making it around the perimeter. Tedious goals were the only things that were keeping him together.

He trudged cautiously next to the wall, appreciating the winter chill that somehow seeped through the cracks and bit his skin. The timeless rhythm of his feet against the floor offered some security. It was something he could control, something that neither genjutsu nor reality could strip from him.

His foot bumped something. Naruto nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise, stumbling back a few steps while staring at a spot he couldn't see.

Someone else was there.

He cautiously slipped closer, reminding himself of the boisterous scent that permeated the room. His limbs froze as he forced his hand to move closer.

Even when he touched the smoothness of human skin, he couldn't help but flinch back. The person was still warm; he had expected them to be as cold as ice. It meant they were alive.

Naruto nearly choked on his own astonishment. He had no idea how long he'd been there—it felt like it'd been a lifetime—but never before had he been in contact with someone outside of the interrogators. It must've been fake, the whole thing. He was certain of it now.

He moved closer against his own judgment, taking a seat beside his cellmate and hugging his knees. Naruto tapped the person lightly with his foot. _They're probably unconscious_, he concluded after a few tries, returning his head to the front.

He felt like a joke or an icebreaker should have been bursting from his lips. After all, this was the first normal person he'd run into, genjutsu or not. His mind was still too jumbled to come up with anything, however, and in the end, he simply gave up with a sigh.

Naruto edged closer to his companion, relishing in the faint warmth they spared him. He wondered what they looked like, what their name was, if they had anyone they cared about back from wherever they were from.

_ Why? Do you have anyone who cares about you?_ they would ask.

_No, sir. Not here I don't. No, ma'am. Not here._

_Why not?_

Naruto coughed as a lump of tears formed in his throat. He swallowed it down and pushed all of the memories back down, practicing as much self-control as he could manage. Besides, they were probably fabricated anyway, all of the loyalty, the joy, the betrayal. None of it was real.

The same thought tore itself back into his consciousness: when had reality stopped? The paralyzing anxiety was almost more than he could take, breaking his strained peace into thousands of pieces. Could someone's life just stop like that, a clock whose gears were stuck while time continued, completely oblivious of the inner struggle? It didn't even seem possible.

Naruto exhaled coolly, taking a moment to collect his thoughts for the first time in days, weeks, months? It was clear that he couldn't start at the end; his recent memories still needed time to scab over.

Black Zetsu. Madara. Obito. The War. Naruto agreed. Everything else, every other memory, all led up to that same point. If he had known what would happen, he probably would have let the plant-jerk go about his business. Naturally, as Uzumaki Naruto, when he overheard some alternate plan to obtain the bijuu, he had been very interested. Some crazy time-travel—or whatever the heck it was—jutsu had not been what he was expecting at all. He learned his lesson. He shouldn't have tried to tackle anyone in the middle of a hand-sign sequence.

_Maybe that was when_, he wondered, distantly rubbing his arms to conserve heat. Naruto frowned. Madara hadn't been anywhere near there. He was sure of it. Unless Zetsu had taken up genjutsu without him knowing, there was no way that time had stopped there.

The blonde decided to take the imaginative leap and assume that that whole episode had been true. He breathed into his cupped hands, the humidity livening his fingers. So, if he had started to lose it afterward, then he had to journey closer to those recent, cutting recollections. Oh, God. Where had it all started?

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**Author's Note:**

This story has been eating me alive for months, but I finally came up with an introduction that I was satisfied with! ;OUO; I didn't plan on having half the story told in a flashback, but that's what happened. :/ Guess you guys'll just have to deal with the Kishimoto-ness. Minato comes up soon, don't worry.

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow (leave a review for the tiny person? ;u;). I'm tying myself to biweekly updates at least (update info's in my profile :p).

Minatochan2


	2. Awakening

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto. ;A;

_Italics_ means: a dream (or a dream-like state), or an emphasized word(s). In conversation, it means a character is either thinking, or Naruto is talking within his mind (usually to Kurama).

**Bold **means: Kurama is talking, there is a narrated time-skip, or Zetsu is talking.

"Normal" means: Naruto is either in the present or a flashback (you kind of have to infer, but there are only those changes after a line break :/)

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**Chapter 2:** Awakening

_ When?_

The first thing Naruto could remember was a blinding flash of light, the speed of it enough to turn the whole world black and white. Voices and people, his people, all vanished into thin air as a sudden stillness enveloped his senses. Oxygen harshly escaped from his lungs when his back collided with the ground.

Naruto didn't have the energy or motivation to move, his mind still dancing to the drumming of his heart. Chirping birds and the rustling of trees swam through his ears as the paralyzing silence faded. He hazily shuffled his legs, testing to see if he was still in one piece. They operated, and he moved onto the impossible task of opening his eyes. It took a moment for the entire world to move into one blur from the seven, illogical ones he saw at first. Eventually, he discovered that it was not nearly as dark as he remembered it being, an array of happy colors singing along the composition of the sky, and the tall trees to all of his sides disagreed severely with the last memory he had. _What had that been?_ he asked himself as he lifted a hand to rub his aching head.

Black Zetsu. Madara. Obito. The War.

Naruto instantly bolted upright, scanning the area for any clues as to where his opponent was, a rush of blood and pain streaking through his limbs. The scenery seemed tranquil enough, but to him, it was the complete opposite. It was too quiet, too peaceful, too simplistic. There was no obvious venom that clung to the air; only the faint, aromatic smell of oaks and grasses greeted him. He shifted uncomfortably to his feet, a hand staying on the ground for the support that his legs refused to provide him. The whole scenario was suspicious.

_ Kurama?_

The fox bobbed his head to display his equal feeling of unease. **He's still here. I can still sense him. Madara, however…**

Naruto watched the demon precariously, waiting for further explanation.

** Go into bijuu mode, and maybe then you'll understand.**

The blonde did as much. Warm chakra soon licked at his skin and ebbed away at the shadows of the surrounding trees. But that was the least of his concerns. Once again, he realized that everything was wrong: the chakra signatures, the placement, the people. They weren't his people. His people were all in the same place, fighting some unstoppable monster controlled by an Uchiha who had convinced himself of an insane, inhuman peace. Here, there was no cluster, an indication of an army, and there was no mass amount of chakra. All of his friends' chakras were dispersed everywhere, some of them not even existing. No Uchiha Madara. No army. Just where the heck was he!?

Naruto carefully shifted his weight among his feet, still searching for some shred of continuity. There was no way it was a genjutsu. Genjutsu could mask and morph chakra, yes, but it could not do so to the level he could sense; genjutsu could not create an accurate and believable personality.

He swallowed warily. So this was real, at least, he thought.

Inside the seal, Kurama worked his jaw in concurrence. **Naruto, we should just focus on finding Zetsu for now. He's a few miles north of here. We'll make him cough up everything and change it back.**

Naruto agreed, letting the cloak of energy disperse to mask his own presence._ Do you remember where his energy is?_

Kurama snorted at the ignorance of the question, but nodded his head regardless.** Of course. He shouldn't be able to move too much. Just keep going straight for a while. I'll tell you when we're close to where he last was.**

With that, Naruto vanished into the shadows of the foliage. The jinchuriki remained fairly vigilant, the lushness of the forest buzzing past him as he leapt from tree to tree.

What a mess this had turned out to be. He didn't have time to waste on someone like Zetsu. Madara was still at large outside of this maelstrom, and he had people depending on him there. Besides, there wasn't anything that Zetsu could gain by picking a fight with him.

An espionage shinobi was practically worthless in a one on one, especially when it came to someone like himself. Naruto took a moment to gauge the akatsuki member's abilities. As far as he knew, Zetsu knew no advanced taijutsu, genjutsu, fuuinjutsu, or ninjutsu outside of the realm of reconnaissance and spying. Naruto was stumped as to why he would risk having a solo encounter.

** He must have a trump card that we don't know about.**

_ Sure looks that way._

**Be on your toes**, Kurama advised, resting his head on his paws in a seemingly lazy way. His narrowed, crimson eyes betrayed his composure.

It felt like miles took hours, even at the quick pace Naruto was travelling. Kurama occasionally redirected him, but for the most part, the time was spent in a perplexed and anxious quiet.

** Here.**

Naruto stuttered to a halt on the forest floor. A small stream of light filtered through the canopy, reflecting dully on the dust and pollen in the air.

_ Are you sure?_ he inquired hesitantly, glancing around at the apparently harmless environment. He had been expecting a gut-wrenching feeling to take hold, but for some reason, he felt unexplainably calm.

**Naruto**, Kurama began. **Look in front of you.**

Naruto did as directed, spotting the slight flash of a cord a step ahead. He knelt down to get a better view. "A trip-wire?" he asked aloud, his eyes following the cable. There were dozens spun throughout the area. The blonde mutedly lectured himself for missing something so painfully obvious.

He was here. There was no doubt about it.

Naruto let the dam of Kurama's chakra burst back through his veins, the abrupt pulsation singeing the grass beneath his feet. The teenager ignored the sensation, however, and focused whatever he could on locating his adversary. It took longer to sift through the massive number of chakra signatures and restrict the search to his immediate vicinity than he had originally figured, but he soon had pinpointed his target. He was moving closer, much close than Naruto had initially thought. His muscles instinctively tightened as the pressure in his chest rose.

**Naru—**

"Hey, you!"

The blonde's cloak slipped off the instant he heard the commanding, high-pitched voice. He spun on his heels to face its owner. From what he could tell, it certainly didn't sound like Zetsu, and what would he have to gain by hiding his identity anyway– let alone in a girl who looked like she could have been thirteen?

"Don't move another step!" the person ordered, throwing Naruto from his reverie. (He hadn't really noticed her much as he was too concerned with Zetsu and his confusing tangle of tactics.)

"You're such a klutz, tripping my wire, loser!" she continued her monologue, a kunai glinting in her bandaged hands.

_I didn't trip anything_, he recalled in surprise. The blonde's eyes flickered around to look for any loose wires but found none.

**These guys are good. **

_Hn? _Naruto mentally looked over his shoulder to peer at his companion.

**Those trip-wires were chakra infused. If any foreign chakra so much as touched it, it would alert the person who set it. **

The blonde cringed when he spied a cord close to his foot. He would have to be more careful about using Kurama's chakra in the future. But another, direr question formulated in his mind.

"So much as a twitch from you and my friend behind you'll tear you to shreds," the teenager continued lecturing, her dark green eyes slitting to emphasize her point.

_There's more than one?_

Naruto blinked in confusion. He decided to take the girl's advice and stay still, suppressing the urge to glance at who was behind himself. Zetsu hadn't traveled with anyone else, and he didn't think that the person could make clones on his own. This made no sense. But one of them had to be him, right? What if he was hiding in the background? All the possibilities were enough to give him a headache.

**Naruto**, Kurama repeated, slightly changing his position inside his mind. **Don't try anything. We've got more pressing matters than Zetsu right now. There is a lot more activity in this than either of us first thought.**

_Let's get out of here then. I'm sure we ca—_

**Don't get ahead of yourself, baka. If you try to zip out of here using my energy, you'll do more than just tip off those trip-wires. They seem to be attached to something much bigger, explosives I'm guessing.** Kurama returned his chin to his paws. **This is obviously something pretty top-secret. We should stick around and find out just what's going on, so we can plan accordingly.**

Naruto had opened his mouth to protest when the same girl's voice interjected. "Hey! I asked you a question!"

The blonde batted his eyes blankly, begging for her to repeat it. She placed her hands on her hips while she annoyingly blew a few stray, hazel bangs from her eyes. "You've either got the thickest head I've ever seen, or you're an expert at playing dumb."

"Stop stalling," came an eerily familiar voice from behind him, a man's voice. He must've been standing closer than Naruto had initially thought. "We know who you're working for, and don't even think of interfering. If you play nice, we won't have to kill you."

Naruto bit back the urge to respond, noting the two fingers pressed carefully on two pressure points in his back. He winced at the sternness of the contact and the way that a dull pain spiked across both spots despite the fact that it was not enough to cause him much harm.

"What's your name?" the man behind him recapped in that same, familiarly smooth voice. It was terrifyingly harsh yet reassuringly gentle. Naruto had heard it thousands of times before. The shinobi's partner huffed as if she was upset that she had been replaced as interrogator. Naruto ignored the gesture, focusing entirely on the person behind him and the unmistakable poker-face he no doubt was wearing behind the secrecy of a navy mask.

He had snapped open his jaw to answer, struggling to copy the calmness of his mental-adversary, when a large explosion rocked the forest floor beneath them. Naruto flinched as a shot of piercing chakra rocketed through his system. The man behind him must have jumped in his surprise, causing chakra to leap to his fingertips for an expected hand sign. Regardless of whether or not the whole incident was done on purpose, it still had the same effect. Naruto forced his knees to stay straight as they resisted the urge to buckle from the shock. He hadn't realized how exhausted he had already been, but when his joints and nerves all locked in an excruciating impasse, he discovered the extent of the toll his body had suffered from the nearly constant fighting of the past few hours.

Amid his own personal struggle, the world still moved on around him in a haze.

"There's more than one?" the hazel-haired girl cursed, darting through the snarl of trip-wires and leaving her comrade behind.

"Wa-wait! We're supposed to— I— you're impossible," her partner groaned in exasperation. Both of his fingers still remained on Naruto's back, but his focus was obviously elsewhere.

Kurama moved to his feet from the confines of the blonde's mind. **That has to be Zetsu. Bet he came out from hiding and triggered one when he was least expecting it. Typical**, he snorted. Naruto still wavered unconfidently on his feet, resting a hand on the side of one of the fox's paws.

_That's great, _he stated bluntly. He felt like any reserves of chakra he might have had were spent, and whatever he had left was quickly disappearing.

Kurama glanced toward the teenager, his eyes lingering on the swirl of characters forming on his back. **This guy knows fuuinjutsu, Naruto. We might be out of the race on this one.**

_Easy for you to say, _he snapped breathily. He might as well have been suffocating. Why was he so darn calm about it? Zetsu was probably going to kill everyone in the area and then extract him. His reaction didn't even make any sense.

**I don't know why, but I feel like something's missing here. **

Naruto glanced back up at him, his sight already starting to double, asking a silent question. Naruto's physical form was beginning to feel the effects of the glowing seal as well, the silver-haired interrogator still standing calmly behind him. He felt like he should have tried to move, but he didn't trust his legs enough, and the flashing of the wires close to him was a very real reminder of any potential repercussions of a failed get-away. He swallowed down the emotion to focus on what the brazen fox was still conveying. **I'll explain later**. Kurama decided once he saw the uncertainty on the teenager's face. **For right now, we need a base. Just let them take you captive for now. We won't be of much use to anyone the way things stand. You're exhausted from fighting all day, and we need a place to piece things together. Besides, they believe you have some info that could be of use, so they won't kill you, while Zetsu obviously would the first chance he'd get. As strange as it is, these guys could prove quite useful.**

_Makes sense_, Naruto gasped, his hands dropping to his knees. _Enemy of my enemy could be my friend, right?_

**The world's not quite so simple, kid.**

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Naruto shifted uncomfortably against the cell wall. The icy coolness had begun to burn his skin instead of offering relief. He gnawed anxiously on his thumb, a bad habit he had undertaken since his capture, and glanced between where he believed his cellmate was and the door. The slight scar from where he had bitten his thumb to use a kuchiyose was able to be sensed by his teeth, a small dent on the otherwise unblemished skin.

He wished he could talk to Kurama; he had taken talking to him for granted. Gosh, now that he thought about it, he wished he could just talk to someone, anyone. It seemed interrogators were the only people who really wanted to ask and receive an answer. He lightly kicked the person to his right, not expecting a response that inevitably didn't come. The presence of someone other than himself was enough to pacify his reeling mind. He could think logically somewhat. Everything up to that point seemed real enough; time hadn't stopped at his capture.

The teenager leaned further back into the wall with a sigh. He wished he could simply dissolve into it and never remerge. Zetsu had it easy, he decided quickly, wherever he was. He knew that the ability would be useless in his situation, but it would have been nice to have had before. No justu would have helped him now. The benefits of all the countless hours of training, sweat, bloodshed, and determination had become just as worthless as the ground beneath his feet. The scar on his thumb began to bleed again, and he scolded himself for falling back into the same habit he had been trying to break himself of for days, weeks, months?

Naruto twisted his wrists, the needles bursting from inside of the bulky chains stretching and tugging his skin. _Chakra-suppressors_, he told himself again. Each time he tried, he hoped that the common, prickling sensation would be gone. But to his dismay, the stir of the pins beneath his skin was there every one of those tries.

He had already concluded that those were what kept him from being able to do much of anything. The traditional fuuinjutsu obviously wasn't good enough in this prison. He could recall Kakashi lecturing the old Team Seven years ago about chakra when they had learned tree-climbing. It was a system, a circuit. If the flow was broken in one place, the entire structure was practically worthless.

He held his hands out in front of himself although he knew the gesture was pointless because he couldn't see in the darkness. The system was broken in two different places, his hands, the only place he could form signs. Whenever Kurama's chakra was freely flowing, even in trace amounts, through him was when he could converse with the fox. His chakra coils must have been disrupted enough by those needles that Kurama's energy couldn't get through, but enough of Naruto's own could, at least, enough for him to live.

The explanation seemed sensible, and he decided to abandon any other thoughts pertaining to the chains. His head was already throbbing as it stood.

He exhaled calmly. As long as he could piece together some things, Naruto figured that his sanity was still in check. The small maneuver brought an unbelievable amount of relief to his aching muscles.

The blonde let his hands fall back into his lap and slid even closer to his unconscious cellmate. He needed to have some emotional support, small as it was, to even consider delving further into his memories.

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Naruto's eyes slowly slid open, the crescent of sight he was spared extremely vague. His head ached weakly, and the upright position he was in didn't help matters. He let his lids fall closed again, deciding to piece himself together before trying a second time.

He could hear a chorus of crickets and cicadas buzzing in the background. Nighttime. There was a chill breeze to blow off the humid air that was clinging to him. Summer. A rope was fastened around his torso. Prisoner.

Memories started to rush back to him at the mention of the word: the war, looking for Black Zetsu, running into that trap. He must have passed out and not realized it.

But none of the conclusions he made solved any of the mysteries that were bouncing around the insides of his skull. Where was he? Who was around him? What had those people thought he had been involved with?

Naruto wanted more of those answers, so he took another crack at opening his eyes. The first few times bore no fruit, but gradually, he managed to widen them enough to see clearly.

He was still in the same forest, a chill crawling along his skin as the scenery was much more ominous in the faint darkness of the coming dawn. Just how long had he been asleep anyway? The teenager could find no answer to that question, much to his dismay.

"You're awake."

Naruto practically jumped in the air at the interruption, his vision snapping to the man in front of him. He shouldn't have been so surprised to be greeted by a silver-haired shinobi with a red eye staring sharply back at him. The man looked identical to his sensei in every aspect, from the way his hair fell to the side to the way he carried himself. There was no doubt about it. This man was Hatake Kakashi, the famed Copy Ninja of Konoha.

Seeing him was a much different experience than hearing his voice. He didn't understand why it was, but that was the truth. It was like being punched in the gut by a whirlwind of realizations, so many that he could hardly even sift through them himself. Kakashi was there, not as his trusted sensei or friend, but as someone that didn't know him and vice versa. The relaxed coldness in his eyes spoke as much. Naruto shifted under that gaze, not sure how he could continue. He hoped that Kurama had been right and that all of this was worth it in the end. All he wanted was to go beat the crap out of a Zetsu, drag the creep's sorry butt back home, and finish his business with Madara. Any of this extra nonsense he really didn't want nor need. It was weird enough being held captive, but being held captive by a friend was in an entirely different realm of awkwardness.

**Don't worry, punk. The great Kyuubi no Kitsune is always right.**

Naruto highly doubted it, but having someone on his side was a comforting change, and it restrained him from arguing with the fox.

Kakashi went unaware of the conversation, strolling nonchalantly over to his side. The prisoner watched him carefully roll up one of his shredded sleeves and tinker with a circle of seals that Naruto had not even known were there. That would explain the numbness he felt in all of his limbs. The shinobi didn't spare him a second glance, finishing with his check and returning back to his post.

Within a few minutes of lengthy silence, a short boy had trotted up to the guard. Naruto had never seen him before in his life, a bizarrely common trend he had begun to notice since Zetsu had caught him in whatever jutsu this was. Kakashi knelt down and whispered a few things to the brown-haired child before sending him off again. Naruto watched him leave, taking slight appreciation in the glance he spared out of his black irises. He wondered just how large this organization was. Setting up all of those cords from before would have taken an eternity, he recognized with a faint frown, leading him to believe that it must have had a lot of people in it.

Kurama hummed in agreement from inside his mindscape. **Sure looks that way.**

Kakashi's pupils never left his figure, continuously causing Naruto to shrink back into himself to talk to his only friend. He could barely stand the tense quiet between the two of them. Only the chirping of the bugs around them kept the environment from becoming completely enveloped in it. He wished that he would pepper him with questions already. What was he waiting for anyway? Naruto's breath caught as he witnessed a flash of yellow, and he realized that it was not a "what" but a "who".

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**Author's Note:**

I'm pretty sure we all know who this mystery person is. ;) Yes, this story has OCs, but they are solely for the purpose of furthering the story line or adding comic relief. I play the game of Neutral Ground when it comes to pairings with Naruto, so don't expect any. :P

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow [and review?].

Minatochan2


	3. What's in a Name

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto. But I do know who Mr. Foot is now. :D

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**Chapter 3:** What's in a Name

"Namikaze Minato."

Iruka began his lecture, tapping the name displayed on the blackboard while parading in front of the classroom. Only a few students were actually paying attention to what he was saying, but he continued in spite of this. "His famed heroism during the Third Great Shinobi War gained him the alias 'Konoha's Yellow Flash', and he was easily the most feared shinobi across enemy lines." The teacher picked up another piece of chalk, scratching a few characters neatly on the board before continuing. "As serious and ruthless as he was in battle, Namikaze-san has frequently been described as a pleasant and likeable person. As future Konoha shinobi yourselves, I would hope that you all would aspire to become as great a shinobi a—" Iruka paused in front of Naruto (who had tactfully been moved to the front) and swept an origami frog off the child's desk, directing his free hand toward the wall where an array of kanji were written. "Or at least be able to recognize the Yondaime Hokage."

The boy distantly followed the man's index finger to where "四代目火影" was scribbled.

He had groaned in frustration, his concern more on the amphibious craft he had been working on than the hokage. He had been planning on making an army to launch during class, but alas, the adult had taken the model Choji had lent him. Had he known that one day he would actually need the information he was being taught, he might have paid more attention.

Naruto thanked his lucky stars that the man's face was carved into a mountain. One look at the person and it would have been impossible _not_ to recognize him. This case was no different.

The blonde hair, the feline arch of his eyes, the nonchalance mixed with overwhelming superiority. It all added up to that same person. The ghastly lack of the white hokage cloak Naruto had grown used to was a striking change, but it definitely didn't change the simple truth: he was Namikaze Minato, his father, alive and well.

His mind was stuck on the fact, complete disbelief written on his face. What type of twisted place was this? He forcefully caught his breathing when he realized it was speeding up. There was no point in freaking out, he scolded himself. He wasn't going to be here for very long anyway, and he needed to remain composed unless he wanted to get executed on the spot.

Naruto forced himself to return his thoughts to the outside world. He figured he must have been seeing Minato's more militaristic side as he watched Kakashi greet his teacher with a lazy salute. The blonde responded with a tilt of his head before taking a seat on top of a broken tree trunk, its side slumbering on the forest floor. Kakashi leaned against a nearby rock while he watched his sensei.

"What were you doing last night?" Minato jumped straight to the point.

**Hmm, looks like you weren't out too long, brat**. Naruto bobbed his head. He had had the same thought in mind. Days and hours were hard to differentiate; he easily could have been unconscious for a week, and the teenager wouldn't have been able to tell.

**Naruto**, Kurama reminded, opening one of his previously closed eyes.

The named person flinched when he noticed that the two men were watching him expectantly. "Looking for something," he muttered honestly. _Yeah, I just lost an army. You wouldn't happen to know where it went, would you?_

The Yondaime's face remained completely cold, his piercing blue eyes an arctic blizzard in the summer's dawn. The sparse light of the morning that wasn't choked out by the forest awning warily avoided his irises. His pupils were centered on Naruto's headband for a little bit, studying the symbol with a deep frown.

**Are you trying to look suspicious?** Kurama snorted as he rolled onto his side. The teenager's subconscious fidgeting in the real world pointed toward a "yes", no matter whose side you were on.

He earned a glare in return. _I'm sorry that I'm an awful liar! Oba-chan and Ero Sennin must've skipped over that lesson, tte bayo!_

The giant fox rolled his eyes. **Then don't lie.**

_Well, if that isn't the dumbest idea I've ever hea— Ow!_

Kurama potently flicked the tail he had just used to whack the jinchuriki upside the head. **You know, simply leaving out some information isn't the same as lying.**

Naruto squinted his eyes in confusion. _But I—_

**Turd**, the fox sighed again, notifying him of the outside world.

The blonde quickly snapped out of the seal. Kakashi and the hokage were sending him the strangest glares he'd ever received. _You're crazy_, they were probably thinking. One of them had definitely continued questioning him. Naruto wished that he would stop zoning out whenever someone asked him something. "Could you repeat that?" he laughed nervously.

Minato reiterated with an unflinchingly firm gaze, "What were you looking for?"

"Just a guy. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have anything to do with… whatever you're doing."

Kakashi shot a look to his sensei, who scowled and smoothly dropped to the ground. Naruto tensed when the man made his way over and knelt down dangerously close to him. His blue eyes glowed hazardously, a shiver ricocheting though Naruto's back as the air froze around him. "Look, kid. You can either take the easy route or the hard one. If you think you can play games with me, think again."

How had Kurama convinced him that it was a good idea to let them take him captive? Naruto let out a small breath, working the next sentence carefully in his mind before attempting to say it. "The name's Naruto, and that's the only truth I've got." He prayed that the confidence he had faked was real enough to pacify the two men before him. If anything, it only made the blonde a foot away more agitated.

"Naruto, right." He stood up and ran a hand through his hair. It was pretty obvious by Minato's sarcasm that he didn't recognize the name at all. Naruto grimaced. Even if this was a different world, wouldn't a father know his own son's name? _Maybe I have a different one here_, he wondered. Oh, God, what if he ran into a different version of himself too!? He considered the idea with wide eyes for a moment, fully prepared to have an inward freak-out session, when the yondaime's voice severed his attention. "I don't have time for this. Kakashi, I'll have Aki relieve you in a few hours. Don't let this guy even breathe without your permission."

Naruto cringed at his failed attempt at honesty. Either way he looked at it, he couldn't make these people trust him. It didn't matter anyway; he wouldn't be staying for that long.

He watched as Minato stalked off behind a tree, vanishing with another hiraishin. The teenager was slightly disappointed that that was it, but he figured something big must've been going on, bigger than he could fathom. All of those trip-wires weren't exactly the red carpet, and the bags beneath both his sensei and his father's eyes spoke volumes about the recent activity. He wondered what it was exactly they were doing…

"Don't get any ideas," Kakashi warned in a passive tone, digging his hands into his pockets and resting further against the bolder behind him. The blonde still squirmed restlessly under the gaze of the silver-haired shinobi and investigated how much moving room he had against the rope around him. It was tied tight enough for him to have a bit of trouble breathing, and the cord dug red lines across his stomach whenever he made any motion, whether small or big. He let his head hang down in defeat. For the moment, it seemed like he was truly stuck.

* * *

Quickly into the next hour, Naruto discovered that this world's Kakashi made for equally as poor conversation as the Kakashi he had grown to know (although, in his defense, the blonde hadn't really make much of an attempt either), and he resorted to talking more to Kurama than anyone else.

**It'll take awhile for your body to recuperate, punk. Be patient.** The fox followed the blonde's pacing back and forth across the sewer of his mind, the water splashing angrily beneath his feet.

_How much is awhile? This is taking too long, tte bayo!_ Naruto turned and repeated his path across the demon's line of sight. _I don't have time to waste sitting here on my butt while Zetsu and Madara are off doing who knows what. _The blonde growled as he turned again. Nothing seemed to be going his way today.

Kurama exhaled his annoyance and rasped his claws against the watery abyss beneath him. **I thought we'd already been through this. God, you can't even see clearly right now.**

Naruto hesitated in his step. Okay, he had a point there. In reality, the edges of Kakashi's person blended with the background slightly, and his head still felt light from a lack of chakra. Mentally, he had speedily recovered from the first wave of nausea and faintness that his physical body was still suffering through and took the time he had to ponder his situation. _It's probably that stupid seal. _He shifted his tattered sleeve and peeled off the broken strands of the protective, wire mesh around his forearm. Perhaps if he had known more about sealing, he would have comprehended the nonsense chicken-scratch tattooed on his skin, but he didn't and decided to let Kurama have a look when he asked.

The fox spent an eternity pouring over the symbols, so long that Naruto's arm began to feel tired from holding it up. Kurama snorted angrily when the teenager began to let his arm droop, so he figured that he would just have to suffer through it until the demon finished. His stomach began to do nervous flips when his friend began rubbing his teeth together with a grimace. That expression didn't look good at all, and it wasn't hard for Naruto to know that something was terribly off.

Kurama eventually closed his eyes, allowing the blonde to return his arm to his side, and let out a breath as if he were a doctor contemplating how to inform a patient of some horrid news. Naruto practiced an unusual amount of patience while the fox picked his words carefully.

** Well, there are two sides to this coin. For one, the seal is fairly harmless to you in a resting state. It's only meant to suppress your chakra to the level of a civilian, so you can still do pretty basic tasks. This fuuinjutsu mixed with your already low energy is probably what's leaving you so pitifully weak. **(Naruto's shoulders drooped with an offended pout at the description.) **It won't kill you or leave you severely impaired if it is undone, but it does have a major disadvantage that could inhibit our cause. **The jinchuriki braced himself for the worst, sucking in a terse, mouthful of air. **This design is a combination of two different seals. The first is what is restraining your chakra flow, but the other….**

Naruto followed the fox's line of sight to the side before returning it back to the face of the feline. _What?_

**It has a multitude of trigger mechanisms should anyone try to break it forcefully. It's got a— **Kurama suddenly remembered exactly _who_ he was talking to when he saw his jinchuriki's confused expression, struggling to follow the flow of the conversation. **–a chakra password, if you will. It's pretty advanced. My guess is that our friendly yondaime increased the effectiveness of one Kakashi made the moment you blacked out. The styles and planes of the two are incredibly different.** Naruto glanced down at his arm again. It still looked like a child's drawing, but he didn't argue. **Anyway, the first plane is purely for that chakra suppression I was talking about earlier. The second is a mess of advanced fuuinjutsu and sealing way too complicated for you to understand, brat. I guess the closest thing I could relate it to is an advanced paper bomb. Trying to break or overwhelm this seal with chakra will… kill the both of us. Sorry to tell you, kid, but we're in for the long haul on this one.**

Naruto didn't know quite how to respond to that, the last sentence ringing in his head. And when he didn't know what to do, it was always best to scream into whatever was close enough.

* * *

Naruto was marching back and forth, his pace much quicker and louder this time, ranting about whatever happened to come to mind. The amber fox had since given up reconciling with him and was resting on the floor with an unamused gaze following the jinchuriki and his wild gestures.

_ This is so stupid, tte bayo! I have to get back home where all of my friends are counting on me, and now you tell me that I'm some walking paper bomb!?_

**Not exactly a paper bomb. That was just an example.**

Naruto continued his frazzled rambling, completely oblivious to the animal beside him. _An—and I've gotta get out of here somehow because if I see one more person who should be dead or should know me and doesn't or I don't know, I swear I'm going to lose it! _

Kurama weighed the statement with a pondering tilt of his head. As far as he was concerned, the kid had already gotten at least that far, but he restrained himself from any comment.

_ I mean, I've got my dad, who at first was reanimated—and that was weird enough! –and now he's alive in some screwed up place where he doesn't even know I exist. _Naruto tugged at his hair in frustration. _The guy looks at me like I killed his best friend, and I didn't even do anything to him! What am I supposed to do about that? Now I actually have to deal with him. _Naruto turned toward the fox for the first time in hours. _How do you deal with your dad who should be dead and now isn't? Like, I don't know! I don't even know how to be a son! _He continued his aimless parade around the sewer._ Am I supposed to face him knowing that!? I just… Oh my God, and don't even get me started on Kakashi-sensei._

The fox hadn't planned on it, but it was obvious that the blonde had already prepared an hour longer speech about the subject.

_He doesn't seem as bad, but what if I say something about him that I shouldn't know, and he tells my dad, and then they both freak out because they think I'm an actual spy for someone I don't even know, and then Zetsu comes out and kills them, and I won't be able to do anything cause I'm stuck in a stupid seal that I can't break unless I feel like dying! This is so messed up! Can't you undo it or something? You sound like you know what you're talking about with all this fuuinjutsu crap! I already know that I don't get it, tte bayo!_

Kurama slowly unfurled himself from his curled up position, stretching his back with a gaping yawn, his teeth glittering in the faint, gold shine of the water. **I can't undo any seal without being there physically. The only way I could even get close would be to instruct you on how to make a reverse-fuuinjustu complex, and I wouldn't trust you with something that complicated. Besides, there's no ink anywhere, and I highly doubt Kakashi is feeling nice today.**

_Why can't I just do a blood sea__l__? _Naruto asked, nearing the end of his rope. He couldn't even think of being stuck as a prisoner when he _let_ them capture him.

The fox shook his head. **Your thumb is way too big to make something as detailed as that, and it still stands that you have no sealing experience whatsoever. And anyway, you're hands are a little…tied. **

Naruto groaned, more at the rejection than the pun. He sternly sat down against the wall. _So… we're stuck._

**More or less.** The fox watched his jinchuriki from the corner of his eye. He let him rest there for a few minutes in silence. It seemed that he'd let off most of his steam for now. **You feeling any better?**

Naruto gradually ripped his gaze from the wall in front of him. _A little. I'm surprised you care._

The sincerity of the environment instantly exploded into tiny bits. **I—I don't! I just didn't want you going out and getting yourself killed, baka! You die, I die, remember?** Kurama turned his back with a snuff, indignantly thrashing a tail against the ground to show his superiority.

_Oi, you can't just be nice, you overgrown cat!_

Kurama's eye twitched at the insult, his neck snapping toward the teenager across the sewer. **You dare offend me!? Tiny human**, he spat,** I'd love to see you try and take me.**

Naruto rose from his place on the floor. _I'd love to see the look on your face when I take a few of those tails as trophies._

The fox lashed another one of the named appendages on the watery abyss beneath himself, the impact sending a wave across the area that ate at the walls like poison. **You wouldn't dare…** He snorted a steam of smoke in the blonde's face when he brought his snout level with him.

_ You ready to get your butt kicked in another Tug-of-War, kitten?_ Naruto rolled up his sleeves.

Kurama's face went blank for a moment, his ears twitching to the sides like a radar. **Not now, Naruto.**

_Oh, giving up that easi—_

The fox hushed him again, and the blonde complied tensely. After a few moments of silence, the tailed-beast explained, **You better get back. I think Kakashi's gone.**

Naruto flinched at the directness. For the past few minutes, he had completely forgotten about the fact that he was in some screwed up place where all he wanted to do was get out, and the statement was like a slap in the face. _Right_, he responded, not quite sure how he felt about what might be on the other side.

**Don't worry so much, baka,** Kurama reassured in a seemingly rude way as he spun himself back into a comfortable position on the floor. **It'll work out. Trust me. The Kyuubi no Kitsune is never wrong.**

Naruto smiled faintly. _He's been wrong about one thing before._ Kurama flinched in surprise. _He would totally lose in a tug-of war._

The fox grunted. **Get out of here, turd.**

* * *

"Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi."

Naruto's ears were practically bleeding from the high-pitched repetition. He snapped open his eyes, an unexpected ray of afternoon sunlight stabbing them until they adjusted. The same girl from before was sitting across from him a few meters away, listlessly trying to get his attention by saying the same word.

"Oi. Oi. Oi—"

"I'm up, I'm up! What do you want?"

The kid barely seemed astonished as she instantly moved onto the next activity of cracking her knuckles, the same strips of linen wrapped around her hands and forearms. "Just making sure you weren't dead or anything," she yawned loudly. "You haven't moved for the past hour."

Naruto moaned. "Well, if I was dead before, I'm alive now. Was that all you wanted?"

The girl shrugged and picked at her teeth with her nails. It seemed she couldn't sit still for two seconds, and Naruto watched her with bleak amusement. "Some entertainment would be nice, but you don't look like you've got anything to offer, so forget I asked."

**Annoying **_**and**_** rude. Looks like you've got quite the guard, Naruto. Better enjoy it while you can**.

Naruto glowered. _You're enjoying this, aren't you?_ He would remember to polish up on some colorful swears for the nodding fox later.

"Oi. Oi—"

"What do you want from me, tte bayo?" Naruto erupted when she started up again. He hadn't even been gone for that long! The blonde hoped that hadn't been how he sounded when he was this girl's age.

As for her, she had already moved onto the task of retying her hair into a stubby ponytail, a bright strip of pink streaking along it. "Look, I don't really care about whatever happens to you in the long run, but if I'm gonna be stuck with you for the next few hours, I'd like to know your name."

The teenager practically died from shock at the question. Neither Minato nor Kakashi had even cared, and he could hardly believe the words had popped out of someone's mouth, albeit sandwiched between the mass of insults she had already dished out to him.

"N—Naruto," he stammered, still partially comatose from the bombshell.

"Naruto?" She let the name roll off her tongue sarcastically and swirled her pointer finger. "That's those thingies in ramen, right?"

He nodded, a piece of himself actually interested in where the conversation could go. Maybe this girl could help him out a little when it came to his sensei and father…

"Pfft, what a stupid alias," she yawned again, stretching her arms above her head.

…or maybe not.

"Hey, ramen is one of the greatest things in the whole world! I love my name!" the blonde opposed in a calmed rage.

"Whatever you say, loser. I'd still rather be named after something cool, like a sword or…anything other than ramen."

Naruto would have thrown his shoe at her were his arms not tied together. Now that he thought about it, he was really missing the silence that Kakashi offered, even if it was an awkward one. Temporarily defeated, he reclined back against the large tree behind him with a sigh. He hadn't really given it much thought, but the bark behind him seemed rough enough to rip through the rope if he tried.

Kurama voiced his disagreement in a glance. **Don't forget about the seal.**

Naruto frowned. Never mind then.

"Hey, baka," the same girl interrupted. "You better get some sleep. We've got some travelling to do tomorrow, and if you drop dead on the road, we're not gonna stop for you."

The teenager recoiled. Travelling? He was going to get even further from Zetsu that way, further from his chance at getting home. Who knew where they were going or why? He wished that he at least knew who the heck the "they" was in this equation. If he knew someone's name, he could at least have a starting point, and if he could find where he began, it couldn't be that much harder to find where he should end.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Yeah, nothing really important has happened at all. :/ Sorry, guys. I need a good base for this story, but I promise that it'll pick up eventually as more and more is explained.

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow and review :3

Minatochan2


	4. Where the Line Lies

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto. :/

* * *

**Chapter 4:** Where the Line Lies

_ He was walking in a desert. The night sky reflected dimly on the white sand, the ground a sea of blinking stars in the twilight, and the bitter wind swept up the pearly grains in a stream of cutting razors that broke his flesh. Naruto remembered this place. He was outside of Suna, the faint memory of the Kazekage rescue mission as tangible as the sand. This place was not familiar just because of that, however. He'd been in this same setting before, the colorless sand, the vast sky, the unbearable loneliness. _

_ He didn't know what force pushed his feet forward, but for some reason, he continued to walk along the plain toward the black drapery of the horizon. To be honest, he wanted nothing more than to lie on that cold, desert floor and marvel at the eternal breath of the sky above him. But his feet continued to move against his will. He was merely watching from his own eyes, powerless to stop. The goal of reaching the end of the barren region was impossible. After all, he'd been there before, been forced to walk that same path, been forced to wait and gaze brokenly at what he could only dream of touching._

_ The dancing of the sand around him was the only thing that graced his ears. His heart felt corroded in the agonizing silence, but he refused to weep over something so trivial. He had already lived through that same isolation, that same emptiness, that same quiet. A second time would not be as hard, at least, he prayed. _

_ The familiarity of the scenario was suddenly shattered as he noticed something in the distance, the shadow clashing painfully against the backdrop of the white desert. His heart skipped a beat in panic. He felt that he should have rejoiced at the thought of something, possibly _someone_, there, enduring the same suffering, but instead, he found that he was horrified at the unexpected change. Before, he had comfort in the idea that he understood exactly what was going to occur. He'd had the same dream thousands of times, after all. The splintering of that brought him only terror as he found himself quickening his pace. _

Don't go there_, he wanted to tell himself. _Just keep aiming for the horizon that you can never reach! That dream will keep you safe! Don't change it; don't change course!

_ His cries went unnoticed, much to his horror. _

_ The wavering figure began to become more defined, the rectangular shape clarifying the closer he got. Before his mind could process what was happening, he was in front of it. A door._

_ Naruto studied the foreigner for a moment, unsure as to whether or not he should unlock what was behind it. His mind was now screaming for himself not to. _Keep walking! You don't know what's behind there! Maybe it will hurt, maybe it will kill, maybe you won't come back out alive!

_ His hand moved against his will, hovering over the blackness of the doorknob that had swiftly materialized. The coolness felt alien against his skin when his fingers glazed the top._

_ The audience of sand had since fallen quiet, watching, waiting, anticipating. Naruto himself was one of them. The siren of his mind was now shrieking, any calmness since vanishing into the undecipherable pleas. His heart and chest were being strangled under the icy gaze of the door. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't feel. Inside, he was tearing himself apart, unable to decide whether he should continue. Couldn't he just stay where he was, watching the sky pass him by into the morning that he knew would never come? He thought the sand would've looked beautiful in that light. Perhaps it would have color. Perhaps it would sparkle with something other than tears and that lonely sky._

_ His blood froze in his veins as he agonizingly twisted the knob. It clicked when it had unlocked, the shrill noise edging on his shaking limbs. _

_ He was crying for himself to stop. He didn't have the power to prevent what was going to happen, he knew that much, but the panic was overwhelming him, and he'd have done anything to make that feeling cease. It felt like an eternity since he had had that power, had any influence on what happened around him or, at least, what he himself did._

_ On the other side, he could hear someone else. He hadn't realized it at first, but now that he had, it was the most familiar sound he had ever heard in all his life, whether it be dream or memory, genjustsu or reality. Someone was crying._

_ The need to save this person invaded his thoughts, a planted emotion of this dream world. He knew it wasn't what he felt— all he felt was the pain and horror and unbelievable sorrow— but it still over-ruled all others in some twisted dictatorship. And it had dictated. _Open it.

_ The sound of the turning doorknob had merely been a precursor of what the door would sound like. Its hinges released a demonic screech, and Naruto recoiled as the sound bombarded his ears. All he wanted to do was run and never turn back, but his hand was glued to the handle, unable and unwilling to relinquish it. _

_ A dark chill escaped from the scant room the door had swung open. Naruto inched it further, the blackness of the desert night like a floodlight in comparison to the darkness of this new area. He didn't want to open it, to see the face behind those tears, but his body was still unresponsive, and he horrifyingly watched as he saw—_

Naruto awoke with a start, his lungs choking on the last bits of the dream. He reached for his throat in a fruitless attempt to ease his breathing, but it only made it more difficult. He couldn't see, and there were no sounds to hear. The thought of the door reentered his mind. Maybe he'd fallen in and was trapped forever. He couldn't tell, and the panic left over was refueled by a new rush of adrenaline. His clothes were damp with sweat, the fabric clinging to his skin helplessly, and a tinge of pain echoed from his wrists, but the discomfort went unnoticed. He couldn't tell where he was. He needed to know that. A hand was on his shoulder, and he could hear someone speaking to him, but none of it mattered. What if it was that person? What if they were still crying those same tears? If he couldn't run from that door, he at least wanted to know that he could have done something to help them.

The teenager collapsed into himself for a few minutes. Kurama would have told him, "You won't be of any use to anyone the way things are." And he would be right. He needed to calm down, even if it was just a little. His entire body was still shaking, and he was struggling to convince himself to stay still, the need to move somehow overpowering his physical self. Naruto gained back some of his strength after awhile, believing himself in a fit enough state to think about things outside of himself.

The chains, the darkness, the winter wind that still slipped through the wall to his back. He recognized it all; he was back in that same, Godforsaken cell. Something was incredibly different though, something that was so horribly wrong that he figured he must have been under another genjutsu.

_ 'A hand was on his shoulder'. _

He distantly reached up to make sure that he understood, to clarify what his gut was telling him. Feminine fingers were resting softly on his back, silently asking if he was alright. Naruto blinked away the shock. He muffled his alarmed breathing so that he could hear himself think.

A person was here with him. It was strange to think of that as an abnormality, but the thought seemed like a mirage in that same, white desert.

He turned his sight to where he figured that person would be, struggling to form words. He realized that he had forgotten how to start a conversation with someone. It had been such a long time….

Luckily, the mysterious person, who seemed just as new to this as he was, brought up a passable opening. "You okay?"

Naruto felt his cheeks flush with heat. Seeing him having an episode was not the best way to be introduced. "Y—yeah. I'm fine, thanks." He couldn't remember feeling more alien in his entire life.

The person's smooth voice sounded female, but the slow and exhausted flow of her words came off as much older. He still found himself wondering what she looked like, even though he was more grateful for the dialogue than he could express. She had probably been a very beautiful woman before she wound up here. Another question posed itself: how_ had_ she gotten here?

Outside of his thoughts, the women continued speaking. "That's good to hear. I'm sorry if I scared you. No one's ever left me with someone else before. I, myself, was quite shocked. Well, I still am." She laughed lightly, instantly making Naruto's disposition light up with a smile. The muscles felt sore from misuse, but grinning helped make the panic of his dream dissolve completely. Even if it was just a genjutsu, he guiltily wished that it wouldn't end.

The lady had continued to talk beside him, chattering in a tired but cheeky whisper as if she were a student skipping class for the first time. Naruto hung dazedly on every word. A whirl of fresh air from the outside had seemingly whipped through his lungs at the trivial and casual talk she proposed.

He noticed distantly that she left out any important information. The teenager couldn't blame her though. Who knows what type of information could be used against them? And besides, she could be a spy, or she could have thought that he was one. A prison complex was not exactly the best place to tell your life's story, even to an inmate. Instead, he concentrated on the sweetness of another person's presence and voice. He could have been lulled to sleep by the sounds he had been deprived of if she hadn't directed a question toward him.

"How long have you been here?"

The blonde poked a finger at himself, hastily letting it drop once he realized that she couldn't have seen it anyway. "Me?"

"Yeah. I mean, just take a guess. How long do you think?"

Naruto settled back against the wall. He had never really given the idea much consideration. The teenager scratched the side of his face in thought before answering, recalling the frosty sting behind his back. "I got here around early winter, so it's probably only been a month or two. It feels like forever though."

The woman hummed gravely, her voice fading into the walls, hardly louder than a gentle murmur. "You're so young too…"

Naruto shifted in his seat under the sudden onset of the unwelcome quiet. "What about you?" he inquired, feeling inclined to keep the flame of their conversation going. It was becoming easier and easier to talk, the unease of the first few minutes vanishing without a trace.

"That's a hard one to answer." The person seemed lost in a dream for a moment, and Naruto almost began to regret asking anything at all. Suddenly, she swallowed hard. "I used to keep track of time based on the shifts the guards made, but after awhile, I began to question my own numbers and gave up. I could have fallen asleep and missed one. Perhaps one guard had to pull two shifts? I drove myself mad with the need to know just a bit of what was going on outside, but all it did was leave me more lost in the end." The blonde could hear her fiddling with her clothing before she continued. "I suppose it must've been a long time by now. But the only thing I have to show for it is some new wrinkles and longer hair." She chuckled drily.

Naruto inched closer, hoping that she could see the faked hope in his eyes. "I'm sure the both of us will get out of this somehow."

Her voice purred again, pleased by the thought of something other than darkness. "When that happens, you'll have to find me. I'm dying to know what you really look like."

The blonde beamed at the thought. She was nice. He hoped that he'd see her again. "Meet for ramen?"

He figured that the woman must have nodded. "Ramen," she agreed, gently resting a hand on the top of his head. Naruto could've gotten lost in the warmth of the touch, but he noticed something painfully obvious.

She wasn't in shackles.

Naruto couldn't tell if his heart had suddenly started pumping ice or if it had stopped altogether.

Genjutsu.

When the woman removed her hand and relaxed back against the wall, he didn't even have the will to move. He should have learned by then, and he hated himself for being so stupidly foolish. He couldn't trust anyone, let alone himself.

_"Fools can't survive in this world," Jiraiya had said with clear conviction. _

Naruto gradually forced himself to gulp down the intense feelings twisting in the pit of his stomach and pressed his back into the cool stones behind himself. He hadn't learned anything, anything at all. So this was just as real as his dream; this didn't exist. All he had were the memories that situated him here. Again, he found himself asking, begging to know where reality had split. The woman beside him had fallen silent, seemingly soaking up the company, and Naruto decided that he would just have to stick through the pain until the jutsu wore off.

He returned to anxiously chewing on the skin of his thumb, letting the bad habit return just this once. He needed the familiarity of the motion as another wave of worry collapsed on his shoulders. It was silent.

* * *

The next two weeks of his capture passed by in a similar fashion. Kakashi would wake him up in the morning and remove the thick rope around him, retying another strip around his wrists in a way that he couldn't make any hand signs. It's not like he would have tried, that seal on his arm made sure of that, but he could understand the skepticism somewhat. If he had been the one to capture someone he didn't recognize, he wouldn't have been as welcoming either. And besides, the silver-haired shinobi had gradually begun to crack, even if it was just a little. If Naruto was lucky, he could get multiple sentences out of the man, and that was enough to pacify him. Kurama made for enough conversation anyway, and it seemed someone else had more than enough to say.

"Ehhh, are we there yet?" the hazel-haired girl groaned, tossing her head back like she would die if she had to take another step.

"We haven't even gone three miles yet," Kakashi drawled, shifting the weight of his backpack along his shoulders. The man was always more than patient on the road. Naruto had never noticed it back in his own world, but Kakashi practiced the tolerance of a god, a quality he had begun to admire. He, himself, had thought about trying to make an escape just so these guys would end his life, which had begun to consist mainly of the girl's monologues. The thought that Kakashi and the others had undergone this for even longer was a scary idea.

"But it feels like we've been walking for hours," she continued to mutter, toying with a paper bomb. "When's Ken-chan coming? I need to make someone feel stupid."

Kakashi shot a look toward Minato, who was in the lead. "It has been awhile. You don't think they were caught by Iwa, do you?"

The blonde man shook his head, not bothering to glance back. "Doubt it. Those two'll look out for one another. Besides, it was a personal mission for intel, and I don't think Kenta would get caught with something as precious as that." The blonde brushed a stray plant out of his way. They were in a forest completely filled with bamboo and other vegetation, and the group followed a shallow trail tread into the floor, the path barely visible in the darkness. Naruto had quickly learned that morning meant late at night in their language as any trip was done between the darkest part of twilight until just after sunset.

Naruto frowned, wrestling with this new name. He'd heard of someone by that title before, even though he couldn't quite remember where.

He turned toward the young girl, deciding to throw all discreteness out the window, earning a dangerous look from Kakashi. "Who's this Kenta guy?"

She folded her arms behind her head, closing her eyes cockily. "Eh, he's a weenie. I'm way manlier than he is."

**That's always good to know**, Kurama observed sarcastically.

The teenager grimaced in annoyance, heaving a sigh as he rotated back to the front. He just couldn't get a straight answer from these people, could he? If he was going to be stuck here, he'd at least like to have some footing, and Naruto was all too eagerly refused any at all.

Kakashi, who had been positioned exactly behind him, had begun to drift closer to the green-eyed girl (no doubt to catch her in anticipation that she might spill something vital to their group). Naruto noticed this with faint amusement, ignoring the small boy who trotted not far behind. _No matter where he is, it seems sensei's stuck baby-sitting someone_. Kurama snorted in concurrence.

The teenager returned his attention forward, allowing the mystery of this Kenta to dissolve in exchange for a much larger one. Namikaze Minato. The man was an enigma if Naruto had ever seen one, and he'd met many people before that he didn't understand at all. He felt like he was watching a brick with legs. The guy would only say as much as was necessary, do as much as was necessary. His face was a mask of passive authority; he was nothing at all like the person Naruto had come to know as his father.

As much as he really could have cared less, Naruto couldn't help but be annoyed with him. It was nice to know a little bit about what made a person tick, what made them happy, what made them sad, and what confused them more than anything in the entire world. Any and all of those answers evaded his grasp, and he found himself craving them even more like a child who saw that someone else had a toy he didn't know he even wanted. He wondered what could have gone so wrong that the famed Yondaime Hokage had become nothing more than a veil that hid all of his emotions.

Naruto had more important things to worry about, however. He held his breath in irritation. Black Zetsu must have been long gone by then, possibly returning back to Madara or sticking around for the show. He was at a loss as to what the guy was up to, and Kurama was still meditating on theories that he must not have felt like sharing yet. Naruto had grown so used to controlling what happened around him that taking a backseat and getting swept up in a current he was powerless to influence was another thing that frustrated him to no end. He hated every second of it.

The blonde was kicked out of his contemplation by that same girl. "Taichou*, why are we keeping this loser around anyway? We could go so much faster if we didn't have all this dead weight."

Naruto seethed at the description but wanted an answer as well. He had half-expected for someone to put a kunai in his back with all the tension surrounding him and his position, but no one had done much other than ask him questions that they wouldn't believe the answers to regardless.

Minato craned his neck backwards, a motion that was revolutionary for the static leader. "I'll tell you later, Aki. I've got my reasons." His voice was as cold and flat as possible, but it didn't keep both teenagers from looking as if they wanted to shoot him with a stream of curses. Kurama would have to suffice as an audience as Naruto stampeded inside the familiar sewer. "Have you come up with any ideas?" he finally ended, gesturing wildly.

The fox watched one of his paws in minute interest and responded, **I've got a few. All of them still lead to us staying here for awhile longer. I'm curious as to what your father's got in store. This is a very unusual predicament.** The blonde didn't agree with that statement at all but channeled some of his agitation into a large exhale. Ero-sennin had always reminded him that his temper was one of his worst assets. Getting upset hadn't changed anything in the past few weeks, and he figured that it wouldn't any time soon.

Outside, the area had grown absurdly quiet without Aki's constant talking. She seemed satisfied with counting the amount of explosives she had on her, and everyone aside from the constantly nonchalant Minato seemed to relax in the peaceful silence.

* * *

Naruto shifted his feet uncomfortably on the ground. The day had gone by fairly painlessly, and now he was back to being tied to a tree while Kakashi stood guard. He was oddly still, even for the lackadaisical shinobi that he was. It made the atmosphere seem heavy with intensity, and the blonde couldn't help but express it in his behavior. And so, he continued to shuffle his feet against the soil, not daring to look at the shinobi across from him. He could remember the man in a serious mood from back when he was younger, and the feral look in his eyes had been enough to scare him to death. Even though Kakashi's mood had not crossed that threshold yet, the thought of it still perturbed the teenager. His sensei had never become solemn about much, and this Kakashi seemed to resemble the one he knew almost exactly.

"Yo," the man greeted a new-comer.

Naruto tore his eyes from a blade of grass to meet with similar blue ones a few meters away. _Tou-chan?_ The teenager stared on in total confusion. What was he doing here? Was that why Kakashi had been so grave? He hoped not, his heart skipping a beat.

The Yellow Flash dismissed Kakashi after a brief exchange, and the two were left alone. Naruto wished that he could have dissolved into the bark against his back when the man's empty eyes shifted to him. He had hardly said more than a few sentences the entirety of the past two weeks, all of them being questions or orders, and the sudden attention was uninvited in the least.

The adult made his way over to him, squatting down a fair distance away. Minato let the silence embitter the air before making any sound. "You do understand how big of a mess you're in, do you not?"

A question. Although the inquiries had been driving Naruto up the wall, he couldn't help but feel relieved. He forced himself to make a weak nod, a terrible disagreement of how he was really feeling, but he figured that shaking his head wasn't much of an option.

Minato plucked an herb from the ground, twirling it in his fingers as he talked. "I'd hope so. You're up to your neck in it by now."

Naruto didn't know whether he should comment or wait for the shinobi to continue, so he retreated back to make sure Kurama was listening. Sure enough, the demon was paying attention to everything, watching through his omniscient, crimson irises as the scene unfolded.

"This is the big leagues. Don't you dare think for a second that I won't kill you if you slip up. If you follow orders, don't ask questions, and do as you're told, I won't have to do that, do you understand?" Naruto nodded. The man in front of him was not the type of shinobi to be messed with anyway. If his ruthless reputation wasn't enough to make the teenager have a slight fear for him, a separate fact did.

The ghost of the early-autumn sun flickered across the blonde's hitai-ate, a deadly reminder of something Naruto had found out the second day of his capture. Wherever they were going, it wasn't Konoha.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

…yay.

For one, Naruto's entire time with Team-AU-Minato-ness is all in his flashbacks while the present-Naruto is stuck in the genjutsu-ridden prison. Sorry if that's been confusing to follow. And, yes, all of the OCs in this fic play an important role in this story that none of you would know yet, so please, bear with me on them—I know they're a pain. *brick'd*

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow and leave a review. I've been so thrilled with the feedback I've been getting so far ;O/O;

Minatochan2

*Taichou=Captain


	5. Contingent

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto…I know. Here comes the depression/denial.

* * *

**Chapter 5:** Contingent

It had been days since that conversation, and the group hadn't moved at all. Visits from Kakashi—or anyone for that matter— had become infrequent luxuries, much to Naruto's surprise. Weren't prisoners always supposed to be guarded? He glowered in annoyance. Minato's swift and grave dialogue was the last time anyone had given him the light of day. The teenager wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing, and he sorely missed talking to anyone. Even Kurama seemed to be taking the day off, napping constantly. Naruto figured that maybe he should also be thinking, planning,_ anything_, but that seemed to be all he had been doing, and he was itching for some action. He figured that he must have thought of any and every answer to all the questions he could be asked. The extensive planning seemed strange, but again, it really was the single thing he could occupy his time with.

He rubbed the soles of his zori on the grass beneath him, making a trail of soil where his feet had been. The bottoms were completely worn out, he noticed with a frown, the treads flattened from all of the running he had been doing both during the war and in this, weird world. Now that he thought about it, he wished he had a change of clothes; his tattered, orange attire lacked any luster that it might have had before. The cheery color had dissolved to a rusty brown, and Naruto missed the brightness of how it used to be.

Speaking of attire, his mind couldn't help but travel to his hitai-ate. The absence of the headband from his forehead was one of the reasons for his restlessness. After all, a headband stated where your home lay and, more importantly, spoke volumes about who you were as a shinobi, your values, your integrity, your resolve. He would hate if something awful had befallen his most prized possession, but telling his captors that fact would only have secured its fate. Naruto was sure that he would have mentioned it had he not had all this time to think.

And that train of thought led him right back to the main riddle that had been plaguing his mind: who exactly was he dealing with? It was a vicious mental cycle, pondering one, trivial thing and somehow ending up on the biggest problem possible, which tended to be either Zetsu or the Yellow Flash's rag-tag group.

Naruto groaned at the immenseness of the question, leaning back until his spine was being prodded by the rigid bark of a tree. None of the others he'd been tied to had left nearly as many splinters, and the rope was tied even tighter than usual, pinning him to his newfound enemy. He might as well have been stuck to a twine of barbed wire.

Naruto corrected his mistake and arched his back away from the tree, letting his mind drift away again once he had checked his surroundings for any other entertainment to no avail.

Who _was_ he dealing with?

It seemed all of the Hidden Villages had been crossed off the table in one swoop— quite literally. The deep line through the Konohagakure insignia had proven that if nothing else had already. The only other group Naruto had met with such hitai-ate was the Akatsuki, and they wouldn't have been nearly as merciful as Kakashi and the others had been so far. But rebel shinobi? Kakashi? The Yondaime?

Even though the other two people he had seen didn't have any headbands at all, Konoha's Copy-nin and Yellow Flash were not people to be messed with. It was a problem, a definite problem. He was sure that answers would only make more questions, but that logic was shoved to the side as Naruto found himself asking them all anyway. It wouldn't have been that difficult to make a list with the amount that were presenting themselves.

Not Iwa. Not Kumo. Not Kiri. Not Suna… Not Konoha.

Not enemies— at least, from what he could tell. Not allies. Not. Not. Not.

Everything was a mystery, and thinking about it made Naruto's head ache from the strain. Physically, he felt like the most exhausted thing on the face of the Earth, and the sting of the tree behind couldn't drive him from the overwhelming need to sleep.

* * *

Naruto blinked the haze from his eyes when he felt something wet against his cheek. His mind was too jumbled to process everything at once, but he did understand one thing: there was a dog sitting in his lap. It nipped at his hand and made a move to lick him again.

"I'm up. I'm up," he yawned groggily, leaning his face away from the pooch. The dog barked sharply and nibbled on his hand again. "Whaddyou want?" the blonde grumbled. "I was having a good dream for once." His head swiveled in the dog's direction, his tired eyes barely taking in the pup.

Long, dark ears dangled from the sides of his hazel head, tipped off with two, squinted eyes. If it hadn't been for the obvious blue vest with a scrawl of characters on the back, Naruto would have thought it an ordinary hound, especially when considering the lack of a hitai-ate, but the blonde instantly recognized the dog.

"One of Kakashi's nin-ken?" he drawled, wishing he could wipe the sleep from his face. "What are you doing here?" The blonde took a moment to check the area. No one else was around, and the morning air told him that they were not going to be doing any travelling that day. "Did they send you to keep guard? Ha, how thoughtful."

"Don't get smart. I'd hate to have to lick you again."

Naruto would have jumped five feet in the air had he not been tied to a tree. He forgot the dog could talk! Then again, the uncanny human voice didn't lessen his surprise any. "I—sorry," he apologized lamely, tilting away from the pup that was now threateningly close.

The canine seemed satisfied with the response and jumped down to the ground to scratch behind his ears. He snapped his jaw with a yawn. "Well, just don't go anywhere. I don't feel like killing anyone today."

"Sorry to be a burden, but it wasn't my goal to be taken prisoner either, datte bayo," Naruto snuffed indignantly.

The dog settled onto his back a few steps away. "Surprised no one's killed you yet. With an attitude like that…"

"You're the second person to tell me that. Are captives really that rare?"

Naruto's companion fell silent on that question, and the blonde couldn't suppress the need to ask something else. The ninken had made for pretty active conversation so far, something he hadn't been able to achieve in awhile, and Naruto was beginning to understand how to get some information without being suspicious. He rested back against his binds, ignoring the prick of the forgotten trunk behind him. "Where's Kakashi? I think I liked him better."

"What? I'm not good enough?" the hound snapped, rolling onto his stomach, wrinkling his clothing.

Naruto managed to hide his smirk and glanced off to the side in a bored imitation. "You'll have to do I guess." He shrugged. "You can't be too picky with guards you know."

The dog watched him from his narrowed pupils, his brow twitching with the need to respond. "Kakashi won't be back till later tonight," he finally caved. "So get used to me being here, brat."

**Learning quick, eh, kid? **Kurama growled with a satisfied smile, laying his head on his crossed wrists.

Naruto beamed. _Maybe just a little._

**Well, learn faster. You're still tied up.**

The blonde's face fell into a scowl. _I thought you were actually going to be nice today._

**Not a chance.**

"Hey, kid."

Naruto 's mind travelled back to the nin-ken. "Hn?"

"Don't go zoning off like that. You're creeping me out." The dog shifted his weight onto his side, his closed eyes still pointing accusingly in the teenager's direction. Naruto had half a mind to tell him off, but he managed to channel his irritation into a glare.

So something was up like he thought. A dog, even a trained one, wasn't exactly ideal for a lookout, and the period the teenager had been left unguarded was a huge tip off. _They must be spread out pretty thin for whatever it is they're up to._

The blonde was wondering whether or not he would risk the added suspicion and ask the nin-ken for some more hints, but the dog beat him to the punch. "Kid, how long've you been here?"

"How the heck should I know?" Naruto remarked jadedly. He probably could've said three weeks, which he was pretty sure was the time, but he decided to play his "innocent prisoner" card a little while longer. Besides, his count could've been wrong anyway.

"You don't have to get snippy. I was just asking a question. Thought you would be used to them by now."

Naruto inspected the blueness of the sky above. Midday. It felt like it was taking forever for time to pass. "I've had too many questions. That's the problem." He lurched forward with a groan.

The dog's head jerked at the statement before he settled back down in the grass. "The problem's probably because you complain too much, kid."

"I do not, tte bayo! And stop calling me 'kid'!"

**He got you there. I always thought nin-ken were dumber than bricks, but I like this one.**

Naruto folded his arms with a pout. _You just like him cause he hates me, Kurama._

The fox didn't argue with that statement, snickering quietly. **Maybe you're on to something.**

Naruto angrily blew a stray bang out of his eyes. It was quickly decided that he liked people more than animals, trained or not. The blonde glanced between the reclined nin-ken and the bijuu. He might as well have been in a petting zoo.

He returned to scuffing the dirt beneath his feet, struggling to keep himself entertained. The most eventful thing seemed to be the dog in front of him, and he was pretty sure that he must've either fallen asleep or was a great actor. _I had to get captured by rebel shinobi. Out of all the people in the world. _

Kurama followed his jinchuriki's mental pacing with a bored look. **Stop being so ungrateful. You could be dead.**

_I'm not being ungrateful!_ Naruto grumbled. _I'm just saying. Nothing ever seems to happen, and if it continues like that, I swear I'll die of boredom._

**You're such a child.**

_Nu-uh. Unlike a certain someone, I can't stand napping all day._

**That's called being a child**, Kurma repeated, resting his cheek on the back of his claws.

_Whatever, datte bayo. _The blonde threw up his hands. _I'm gonna go be productive and find a way to get out of here._

**Yeah, good luck with that. I'll be in here laughing at your failures.**

Naruto decided to make a quick exit before he got in another quarrel with the fox, but he found himself in the same spot: tied to a tree with a nin-ken passed out practically within kicking distance. It was always the same. Naruto sucked in a deep breath, holding the fiery air in his lungs before finally releasing it and settling down to think. He already knew he couldn't move too much with the rope being fixed as tight as it was as he had tried to wriggle free another time. _No, that's not gonna work._

**Still laughing I'll have you know.**

_You're not helping, Kurama!_

**I'm not here to help.**

Naruto mentally stuck his tongue out. The momentary defeat tasted worse when the fox was proved right. He ran through everything he could think of, and he still couldn't find any way to out. And besides, there was only one reason a nin-ken would feel so relaxed while on guard.

The teenager leaned back and immediately felt a prick nipping at his shoulder. "This stupid tree!" he snapped angrily, craning his head to cuss the thing out when he realized a piece of rope pinned to a shard of the bark. He batted his eyes at the opportunity before carefully twisting his shoulder beside the rope.

Kurama seemed slightly disappointed at the success. **So you caught a break. Don't screw it up, turd. **

"I'm not gonna screw it up," Naruto muttered to himself as he cautiously shifted his arm up and down in the hope of sawing the cord. Sure enough, the bark suited as a blade, agonizingly slicing one thread of the line at a time. The blonde spared a glance to his guard, who seemed as relaxed as possible, but his squinted eyes were hard to decipher as active or asleep. He took the assumption that he hadn't yet been found out and continued, nearly half of the rope dissolving into the wood.

As Naruto quickly discovered, whenever it seemed like things were taking a turn for the better, something else always had to come and ruin everything. In this case, everything collapsed in a matter of seconds. The entire forest shook, raining leaves and loose branches in a shower of chaos followed by a massive, earsplitting boom that created a layer of free topsoil that fogged the atmosphere. Naruto coughed as the dust subsided, wishing he could wave a hand in front of his face to clear the air, but a more important problem presented itself as a kunai sliced through the smog and landed centimeters from his feet. He flinched slightly at the directness and glanced ahead as another poof of smoke erupted from where the nin-ken had disappeared, a separate knife embedding itself where the pup had been situated. The blonde quickly spared a glance to the scrap of rope hidden beside his shoulder. It was almost cut completely, but he needed at least another few seconds in order for it to be ripped off by force.

He tore his eyes away from the thread as three, masked shinobi alighted before him. Naruto was practically speechless by the sudden occurrences, almost coming too fast for him to even comprehend, but he forced himself to pay attention to every detail of what was happening around him. There was no mistaking the white vests and the flaming black swirl of a tattoo on their shoulders.

_Konoha ANBU?_

"They took a prisoner," one with a bear mask stated flatly. The vibe was completely wrong, a small shiver running along the teenager's spine at the presence of the operatives. They certainly weren't friendly.

Naruto distantly pressed his shoulder closer to the twine around him, a small prick of blood escaping as his skin scraped the bark. Just a little longer….

A glitter of metal flashed near his throat, wielded by one of the younger looking ANBU. "Who are you?"

Naruto felt slightly livid as the muffled question exited the mask, the sass sinking into his response. "Naruto. What's it to you?" The blade glinted in his eyes.

"Panther. No survivors. Those are the orders," Bear averred, signaling to the third group member beside him.

"Hai."

The two dispersed in a shunshin, leaving their teammate alone. A small stretch of silence pervaded the atmosphere as the two teenagers waited from one to make a move. Naruto gradually began to grow more and more confused. _Why hasn't this kid killed me yet? I mean, it's not a bad thing, but…_

**Naruto, you've got a one-on-one fight right now. If he's having problems, it'll only tip things more in your favor. **

_Yeah. _The blonde could feel the cord getting thinner and thinner as he prayed that his alternative motive would be kept hidden for awhile longer. He could feel the tension tighten to a tangible level, and the kunai wavered unsurely a breath away from his face.

He could feel the last thread release, the pressure of the atmosphere snapping along with the rope. Against Kurama's advice to take some time to plan, Naruto whipped into action, pinning the blade between his open palms and twirling it until the stunned ANBU was on his back. The boy was about to launch a counter attack, readying himself as quickly as he was allowed, but his speed failed to match his opponent as a swift but clear blow was dealt to his neck.

_Well, that wasn't too hard_, Naruto chirped to the lazy fox, slightly surprised himself. The kid didn't even seem like he had it in him to kill anyone, and he couldn't help but feel slightly bad for him. Naruto almost wanted to sneak a peek under his mask. Another blast quickly reminded him that there were less trivial things to worry about. He would have to be content with remembering the crazy brown hair and the red mask.

Naruto quickly snatched up the remains of the rope and a few of the kunai scattered on the ground, scanning the area quickly. It seemed fairly restful aside from the occasional explosion from further away, perhaps a mile or two.

_Zetsu. Zetsu. Right…where is he? _

**Naruto, you still have that seal on you**, Kurama sighed. **There's no point in asking me.**

The blonde casually glanced down to his right arm. He had nearly forgotten about the darned thing; the rope had seemed more important than anything else. And besides, the thrill of finally being unbound was so addictive. He could have melted in the openness and freedom he had been craving for what felt like an eternity. There was no time for those things, though, as Naruto found himself sprinting as fast as he could to get as far away as possible. He needed to be out of reach. Then, he could think of a plan. The fuuinjutsu problem would just have to wait until later.

There was another matter that was ramming harder and harder against his forehead. Where to go? It was one of the worst feelings in the world, not knowing where you were. Jiraiya and he had been lost plenty of times during their years of traveling, but they had always been able to ask for directions after the customary hour of frustrated grumbling and map decoding. Here, it seemed that there were only two types of people: someone who wanted to kill him and someone who wanted to enslave him. Naruto scowled. His previous luck was quickly running out.

The teenager glanced up through the forest canopy at the blue sky. A few columns of billowing smoke sprouted into the air in the distance. His frown deepened.

**Brat, I know what you're thinking, and I don't like it.**

_You said it yourself, Kurama. We can't undo the seal, and besides, I could get captured by worse people._

**Those are both true, but maybe you should try using your head for once, you dope.**

Naruto growled, leaning against an isolated boulder in annoyance. Why did it have to be so hard to get home? He glanced back to those same pillars of smoldering ash, feeling a mixture of dull guilt and intense curiosity. He still had no idea where he was going, and that was the only direction that stuck out like a sore thumb. Naruto ran a hand through his hair. _Kurama._

**Don't even say it. I already know where this is going.**

_Hey, it's not that bad of an idea. I can't go to a paranoid Konoha without my hitai-ate. And anyway, I could always break out if things don't work._

**Sure, beat off Kakashi and the Yondaime with a piece of rope and some kunai. **Kurama rolled his eyes and buried his face in his arms.

_I'm sure I could handle Kakashi at least, tte bayo_, the blonde grumbled._ And I'm not gonna get that close. Just go find out what's going on from a distance. Any info would help right now. We've got about as much intell on this place as Lee does old age._

**Whatever. As long as you don't get caught, **the fox subsided carelessly.

Naruto straightened himself, twirling a kunai around his finger. _Of course not! This is Uzumaki Naruto you're talking to, after all!_

* * *

**Author's Note:**

*facepalms* Ugh, worst place to end a chapter. This was meant to be way longer, but it really didn't happen. Sorry, guys oNo" And, yes, the story is finally starting to pick up a little bit and will eventually stop dragging its feet as much. Hopefully, it'll get a little more fun to read as it gets closer to Part 2 and more background is provided (for certain, the last half of this story will be way more canon that it's been sounding .u. *excited to get there*).

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow and review. :)

Minatochan2


	6. Pin Drop

**Disclaimer:** Don't own it, just write it. :p

Note: Aki is an OC. Yep.

* * *

**Chapter 6:** Pin Drop

It was a crazy thought, but Naruto really wished something would just blow up already to tell him where to go. Everything had grown uncomfortably silent in the past few minutes, an abrupt and unpleasant change. Quiet didn't do much to ease his tensed nerves, but then again, when did it ever?

The teenager was perched up in a tree a few dozen meters away from the last explosion, casually running through his next move. Getting into that tree had been a nearly impossible task (something he was embarrassed about not being able to do without difficultly), and he could only guess how hard it would be to fight off anyone if he was cornered by either the Konoha ANBU (at least, that's the only group that came to mind) or his previous captors.

"Troublesome," he muttered while he absentmindedly tapped his fist on the trunk beside him. Well, he'd come too far to back out by then, so he cautiously slipped across the intertwining branches of oaks and bamboo stalks in the hopes of making some headway without being intercepted. The blonde hadn't run into anyone so far and wanted to keep it that way.

It wasn't long before that luck ran out, and he stumbled across a few masked shinobi. They were different from the entourage he had met before— in more ways than one. Naruto managed to hop down to ground level, ignoring the minor streak of discomfort in his legs, and vigilantly made his way over to them after giving the area a quick scan. The swift slashes across their torsos told of a quick end, and the deepness of the wounds shared that the weapon had been a kunai. Naruto cupped his chin, tilting his head to the side. Something was off about them though. It looked almost like there had been three different kunai at once…

His head snapped to the side as a short yelp from nearby interrupted his thought process. It wasn't from that far away.

Kurama flashed one red eye.

_Just recon. Just recon_, Naruto reassured. Kurama snorted but, once again, didn't argue.

The blonde made a quick turn to where he had heard the noise, ready to bolt off to the rescue, before he noticed something: he didn't have any weapons. Naruto scrunched up his face in distaste. He was as good as a dead man in this situation with a crap-level of chakra and nothing to defend himself with. As bad as he felt about it, he took a few kunai from the fallen shinobi next to him, trying to keep himself from glancing at the stunned eyes that peeked through their masks. They hadn't seen death coming.

It was still strangely quiet as he inched nearer to his destination little by little. Naruto slipped behind a tree, struggling to keep his face straight at the person he could heed a small ways away; he could hear someone cussing from under their breath, something that an ANBU certainly wouldn't do on a mission— at least, not that loud. Maybe he'd come across a civilian. Naruto didn't feel solid enough in the idea to reveal himself though and decided to wait and see what would unfold.

Another blast rocked the floor but from further away, although the fresh rush of adrenaline didn't seem to realize that. Naruto was already pretty jumpy as it stood, and he noticed that he could hardly keep his hand steady. He hadn't been in a situation that intense for almost a month. Just how out of practice was he?

A new voice entered the scene. It was faint and distant, but loud enough for Naruto to notice. He squinted his eyes to search for the person, grateful for the shade of the forest canopy from the afternoon sun. Panic squeezed his lungs. He could spy a white mask crouched in the cover of a bush not far away, tapping at a radio wire in his ear. Had he seen him? Naruto breathed out smoothly. It didn't seem like it.

Actually, the closer the blonde looked, the more it seemed like the ANBU was watching right _next_ to him. The teenager shrunk back a little, hoping to keep his cover from being blown by either person. A kunai. Naruto hadn't noticed it at first either until the ANBU's blade flashed a glare of sun into his eyes. The guy had a target.

Naruto glanced between the ANBU's line of sight and the man himself, lightly fingering the kunai he had slipped up his sleeve as he contemplated what to do next. The justice-seeking side of him told him to do something, but an opposing part told him to just leave it be and wait. One piece immediately over powered the other when the shinobi's blade flickered with lethal intent in the shadows.

"Look out!"

To be honest, Naruto didn't really know where any of the energy had come from to print across a space that fast, but it definitely disappeared by the time he and the person he had tackled hit the ground. The world decided to take it's time clearing up once the place had grown silent again. The blonde gently sat up, glad that he had tossed his kunai at the ANBU before landing or else he was certain he would've been nursing one heck of a wound.

"I—it's you!"

Accusing? Surprised? Either way, the person he had decided to so graciously save recognized him, and the trend that anyone who knew him wasn't friendly seemed to be getting a pretty good laugh out of his situation lately. Naruto pushed himself off his stomach to look up. He hadn't regretted anything so much as seeing child-like, green eyes blinking at him in confusion. Maybe Sakura had been onto something when she told him he was too sacrificial…

"Wh—what the heck do you think you're doi—"

It was such a nice feeling to be able to clamp someone's mouth shut for once that Naruto was almost afraid that he'd done it too harshly. "Just shut up for five seconds, please!" he hissed, glancing around to make sure they hadn't attracted any attention. A lazy trail of wind sauntered through and tickled the foliage, but for the most part, everything seemed undisturbed. The hazel-haired girl in front of him was sticking him with the most irritated glare he'd ever received (_well, excluding Sasuke_, he corrected. _Maybe Sakura too_). She was still trying to speak through his hand, and it was probably more annoying than when she talked normally.

Naruto was getting slightly panicky, mentally killing himself for getting too close, but kept himself as calm as possible on the outside, thinking and over-thinking where to go from there. He really hoped karma wasn't getting back at him for all the pranks he had every pulled, or it was going to be a very long day.

Something suddenly didn't feel right, something that Naruto couldn't ignore. He immediately retracted his hand with a panicky quickness. "Ew! Did you just lick me!?" The blonde shifted his eyes from his wet fingers in horrified shock.

"You wouldn't let me go, eh!" She sounded like that explained everything, folding her arms stubbornly.

"Yeah, but what are you? Five?" Naruto wiped off the spit on his torn pants with a murmur of disapproval. And people called him uncivilized.

The seriousness of the situation suddenly clicked back into place as another rough gust of wind blew threw from a new detonation.

"Wow, they're really going to town on 'em today!"

Naruto turned back to the girl next to him, still crouched on a grassy patch of the ground. "You sound like this happens often, tte bayo," he commented lightly, slightly surprised at the short nod that came in response.

"Yep! Shipments usually pick up closer to fall."

The blonde almost wanted to ask more, but the realization hit him that he needed to lose this person as soon as he could.

He coughed into his hand as an icebreaker. "Well, ehrm, you seem to be off alright, so I guess I'll just be leaving now." Naruto made a swift exit, sighing that there hadn't been any—

"Hey, wait up!"

—of that. The blonde swept a hand across his face. The idea that karma was coming around to kick him in the butt seemed like a more plausible option by the second. A bouncy kid hastily scrambled after him and was soon walking sideways beside him, struggling to catch his attention. "So, Weird-Alias-san, where're we headed, eh?"

Naruto could've sworn he'd just choked on a bug. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Where're we goin'?"

The blonde bit back a groan. "Okay, okay, Airi, I don't have time fo—"

"It's _Aki_," the girl corrected with a snort, reciting both syllables slowly and widely. Naruto found room to mutter a quick apology to Iruka-sensei, wherever he was. It had seemed like a good idea to paint his desk pink at the time…

"Aki, whatever," the teenager breathed with a wave of his hand. "Look, your group is over where all the explosions are. Maybe _you_ should go find them while _I _go the other direction." Naruto tautly gestured to the route he was headed.

Aki puttered to a stop, Naruto continuing on ahead. "I can't go 'find them'. I rigged the place with explosives, and Taichou ordered that I wait it out until they come find me. Yep." She nodded her head and trotted back up to him. "I'm just gonna stick with you for awhile then."

It was Naruto's turn to stop. It wasn't a hard thing to understand that someone wouldn't want to be tailed (heck, even he could get it), but this kid just couldn't grasp anything. His eyes widened. _Kurama, wh—what if…_

The fox perked up at the mention of his name but kept silent.

_What if she's like Shikamaru?_ It took a moment, but soon Kurama had burst out laughing, flashing all of his canines. At the mockery, Naruto immediately went on the defensive. _Just hear me out! She looks and acts like an idiot, but maybe she knows that I don't want to be tailed, and that's why she's so persistent but in a stupid way, tte bayo! _The teenager spared a glance over his shoulder, a tiny bit of paranoia wavering in his gaze as he peeked at the girl behind him. _She's a genius._

**Naruto, if you think that, you're as dumb as bricks. Why would she be ordered to lie low if she was an amazing strategist? **

The insulted person had opened his jaw with a response but found that he had none. _It was just a thought_, he stuttered, fighting to nurse his wounded pride.

Kurama lightly shook his head and went back to napping, letting Naruto handle his own problems.

The person in question was standing at his side when Naruto came to a decision. "Fine. You can tag along for a little bit, but you have to be quiet. Consider it a favor to the person who just saved your hide, okay?"

"Eh? I didn't ask for you to save me!"

Naruto made a drastic signal over his shoulder for her to shut up. Apparently, Aki had problems following directions. _Wonderful_. The blonde continued to plow ahead, brushing a few ferns from his path.

"Where are you going?"

"That way." Naruto didn't bother turning around.

"You can't go that way. Konohagakure is over there."

The teenager exhaled loudly, not bothering to hide the agitation in his voice. He slowly rotated to face her. "Maybe I'd like to go to Konoha. Ever thought of that?"

"Why would anyone want to go there?" She crumpled up her face and caught up to the stranger. "I mean, the entire place is paranoid, and I think you just tried to kill one of their ANBU."

Naruto froze. Oh, crap. He had, hadn't he? He didn't have anywhere else to go, and the idea that he had basically exiled himself from the one place he did have was something he hadn't thought about in the moment. He promptly pulled himself together, already regretting the question he was going to ask. "What do you propose then?"

"Not going to Konoha for starters," she scoffed, her hands on her hips. "I wouldn't go to Iwa either. Or Kiri for that matter. Gosh, you are kinda screwed, huh?"Aki scratched at her cheek in thought, half trying to come up with a possible option, half not caring.

Naruto grumbled sarcastic thanks. He could've guessed that. His hitai-ate would've given him away before he'd have reached the border. The blonde ran a hand over his empty forehead. Right. He didn't even have that.

"Anyway," the girl continued, tugging at the edges of the ribbon around her waist. "I wouldn't go wandering around by myself if I were you. Konoha operatives aren't the worse things that are floating around."

Naruto straightened, suddenly feeling conscious about having stayed in the same place for so long. It was a wonder no one had come across them yet… "What do you mean 'worse things'?" he asked, opting for going a different direction with the kid in tow, a kid who was all too eager to blurt out an answer.

"One of their guys snuck up from behind me! I mean, he had to be ANBU, but no one has been able to get behind me that easily!"

Naruto sighed. He had almost gotten concerned over nothing. Based on the looks of it, it wouldn't have been that hard to get behind Aki at all, and she easily could've been over exaggerating if one judged her on her cocky attitude alone. He chimed a thoughtful hum to show that he was paying attention anyway. "And that's why you screamed like a sissy?"

The red marks lining her cheeks signaled a clear bull's-eye. "Ehh!? No! I was just startled!" Naruto shot her a glare to tell her to pipe down, but she went on in a harsh whisper, "I'm sure you would've freaked out if some guy randomly popped out from the inside of a tree behind you!"

Naruto's legs immediately stopped working. He really hoped that she was exaggerating.

"Ha, told you you'd be scare—"

"What did he look like!?" The blonde hardly noticed that he shaking the girl by her shoulders, but he didn't really care. He only knew three people who could naturally "pop out of trees". Unless Senju Hashirama decided to pay a visit from the grave or Yamato-taichou was with ANBU here…

"I dunno. He kinda looked like a shadow," came the startled reply. "Maybe he was wearing a full body suit or something. I didn't really get a good look cause he ran off."

Naruto sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It definitely sounded like him if anything... What a mess. Then again, it gave him something to shoot for. He sucked in a calming breath so that he didn't scare his only source of intel. "Did you see which way he went?" She had opened her mouth to answer when a collage of explosions echoed back through the forest, provoking a downpour of leaves and loose branches. There hadn't been that many before– especially all at once!

"What the heck?"

It seemed Naruto wasn't the only person who was surprised by the literal bombshell. A fast goodbye immediately came from the devotee next to him. "This is where we split, Alias-man. Nice knowing you." The blonde was slightly taken off guard by the tacky salute he was tossed.

Naruto slumped forward with a look of loathing. If Zetsu was hanging around, it would be an awful idea to let someone go traipsing around by themselves in a dank forest; it'd be like leading a lamb to the slaughter. He could always just get her to lead him to where the rest of her group was and then trail them. Zetsu seemed to have a knack for hanging around the same places they were. Naruto gave a mental nod of approval. He could do it, couldn't he? Of course. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions for that, could there? There wasn't any time to think of those things anyway. Uzumaki Naruto was better at winging things to begin with. He could handle anything.

The teenager had quickly caught up to the girl. "I— Hold up, tte bayo!" Naruto swiftly rushed. "If you follow your own advice, you wouldn't want to be walking around here without someone else, right? This place is crawling with ANBU and that mystery guy. I really don't have anywhere else to go, so… I think I'll just hang around for a little while."

**Smooth, turd. **

"Lots of help you'll be with a cut up shoulder like that, eh."

Shoulder? Naruto glanced down, mutely stunned by the crimson that stained the black part of his sweatshirt, running down his hand. How could he have not felt that at all?! The solution was simple: pure adrenaline. The wound looked pretty deep, and he didn't want to think about how awful it would feel when the adrenaline left him.

**Real smooth.**

_Can't you heal this, Kurama? _Naruto asked pointedly. He was pretty sure that the fox was just choosing to be grumpy that day.

**Remember that seal on your arm?**

The blonde growled. He hated rhetorical questions just as much as bad karma.

Outside of his mind, the hazel-haired girl looked like she had half a mind to continue on without him, but for some reason, she stayed put, itching at the linen strips of her zori. "You done zoning out, Alias-san?"

"It's Naruto. If you ask someone for their name, you might as well remember it."

"Wait, that's really your name?" Aki looked like she was about a second away from laughing when another bang lit up the sky. It was closer than the last few. "They can't be that far from here. You can tag along if you want" [Naruto cringed at how quickly the tables had turned in that regard] "just don't get yourself killed or anything. There's already gonna be enough dead guys by the end of this."

_Fine_, Naruto huffed mentally, following after her. The forest rushed by like the rapids of a river, churning and animated in some moments and then abruptly tranquilizing. A few felled ANBU sunk into the blur, but the blonde hardly noticed, careful to keep a healthy distance from the person in front so that he wouldn't be found out. It seemed like everything could work out pretty smoothly. Then again, his head was growing fuzzy, maybe from blood loss, but he figured he'd be alright. He'd had much worse before.

He noticed the girl gradually coming to a halt. She looked a little lost, and Naruto began to regret following her. He probably should've just gone on his own. The idea hadn't been something that had occurred at the time; his brain felt like it was slowly turning to mud.

Call it gut instinct, but something Naruto couldn't put his finger on made the hair on the back of his neck rise. He'd been having that feeling way too often. That knowledge didn't make it go away. The fact that the line of trees suddenly erupted into large flames, he figured, always could've played a part in it too.

His legs worked on impulse from years of training, training that could've been perceived as backwards because as soon as he saw the person he'd been trailing burst through the flames to the other side, he was speedily behind, the wall of fire the only thing barring his way. Naruto could feel the intensity of the heat smarting his skin in an orange dance, and the height of the flaming hedge seemed to outstretch the leafy canopy that was dissolving above. He could practically feel Zetsu on the opposing end, the only way to get answers to where he was and how to get back. But the blaze almost seemed too much to overcome in the moment.

The teenager forced his legs to back up a few paces, sucking in a deep breath, the air coated with ashen dust. He eyed the seemingly endless blaze. He'd overcome much more threatening things. Everything was tainted in warm tones, flickering back and forth and stretching distorted shadows. Even with a seal binding him , he could still make it. After all, home would be waiting on the other side. He could make it for sure.

Naruto didn't even know if he had the energy to push through it, but soon enough, he found himself rupturing through the center of the vortex. It was like being stuck in a limbo of icy cold and scalding hot that cancelled each other out in a fight that he was pinned in the center of. The roar of the fire was almost overwhelming. The smell was almost intoxicating. But somehow, he found himself spat out on the opposite end, landing roughly on his good shoulder, the first sign of luck he'd really had all day.

_Haha! Made it, tte bayo!_ Naruto cheered, sticking a finger at his friend. Kurama rolled his eyes and let the blonde celebrate his minor accomplishment.

Naruto sat up on the other end of the forest, rubbing his aching head, a clearing splayed out around him from what he could gather. He brushed off his pant legs as he stood up. The success of his maneuver quickly drained from his face. A kunai hung a few inches from his face. Oh, how lovely…

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Haha, I owe you all a triple apology:

1) Gosh, this was a whole month late! ONO" This was the time of year that all the family drama and school stressors that could've ever happened happened, and was the last thing on my mind. Sorry!

2) Haha, so much OC this chapter *brick'd* I really feel awkward writing with her in this story, but I really needed Aki here because Kakashi and Minato in this universe just don't do much for any humor, and they're kind of…not dumber than Naruto is. I guess that's a good way to put it. She'll fade to the back as things settle, but I need a character that fits her mold for these intro chapters.

3) Cliffhanger… I'm so mean….

Well, that just about sums it up. Hope this chapter was okay for you all! I've had too much caffeine if that explains why it may or may not make any sense at all (/xD). The next update for certain won't be until after May 14th (AP exam). That's only ten days though. Best of luck for you guys who do have those things and college exams!

Until then, chicas!

Minatochan2

If it doesn't say it's discontinued, it's not, so please follow or leave a review until then :)


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